


Guardian For Hire

by cmlanning



Category: Original Work
Genre: Paranormal, Supernatural Elements, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-28 02:36:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20771135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cmlanning/pseuds/cmlanning
Summary: Need someone to watch your back and protect your from magical threats? Tia is your gal. For the right fee, she'll keep the vampires and werewolves off of you. She is the guardian for hire.





	Guardian For Hire

Running through a cemetery at night is enough to give one the heebie jeebies, but when the moon is full, and three specters are giving chase, my anxiety enters a whole new level. 

Fortunately I had a pocket full of chocolate peanut butter bon bons. I pulled out two, tossing them in and chewing as I ran. My killer sweet tooth was serious business and stopped for nothing.

I passed an older man in black vestments with a white collar. He was kneeled over a small headstone with a silver cross in his right hand. Quiet prayers filled my ears when I ran by him. 

“Hey Father McSlowPrayer. You wanna to hurry this up? Full moon, full strength specters, remember?”

He grunted and looked over at me with grumpy brown eyes, “You’ll be paid for the full job, Pagan. And this prayer is delicate. Just have faith. If you possess even the smallest bit of it, wonderful things can happen.” 

_ Have some faith, Tia!  _ I mocked in my head. 

The three specters racing across the ground at me wouldn’t normally be this stirred up. But the lady in white the priest had been hired to cleanse was using them to try and stop the exorcist. As I’d be paid a tidy sum straight from The Vatican, I was to protect this holy man. Of course, money is useless if I get killed trying to earn it. 

One specter swiped at me with a glowing bony claw, but I managed to avoid the blow by a few inches, my long silver and purple hair braid bouncing behind me. 

The specters didn’t look like Casper, not by a long shot. They looked like foggy masses or purple and black shadow, shrouded in tattered clothing. They had no flesh, only bones and rags. Shrieks of rage and confusion were common, both from them and myself as I faced them. 

_ I hate specters. I hate them. I hate them,  _ I thought, cursing myself for taking this gig. Still, those Catholics paid good money, and my downtown loft back in St. Louis was far from free. 

As I spun away from another specter, I reached into my moss-green satchel and pulled out the last of my white candles. It was about six inches long and narrow, with sigils carved down one side, my own spell language. 

“Abstargo,” I muttered, the gold scales on my candle-holding arm glowing just a bit. I held the candle close to my mouth and blew a small stream of green fire. The wick on my candle caught some of my fire, and the sigils began to glow green as it did. 

I hurled the candle into the nearest specter, and it flew through the spirit’s chest, lighting it ablaze in green fire as it did so. The specter let out an ear-piercing shriek, not the first of the night, and quickly burned up until there was nothing left but a sprinkling of ash on the ground. My candle went out after it did its job and landed on the ground, melting until there was nothing left. 

Reaching into my bag, I confirmed that was my last candle. Reaching into my pocket, I confirmed I had not eaten the last bon bon. I popped two more into my mouth. 

“Crud. I’m going to have to get creative with these last two specters,” I muttered. 

As if sending five or six specters back into the afterlife wasn’t enough work for the night, now I still had these two remaining. They took no time to mourn their friend and raced over the leaves and dead grass for me. 

Normally being in a cemetery at night is taboo. Leftover spirits fed by lingering worries and emotions just before death do not like to be disturbed. And on a full moon when their energy is at its highest? Big no no. 

But the priest swore over and over again this was the only night he could exorcise the lady in white that’d so far killed about five people in town. Something about he had to banish the spirit at full strength so there’d be nothing lingering for it to regenerate from. 

And the $75-an-hour rate his superiors would pay for a full night of protection? I guess I really had no complaints. . . except for the fact we were dealing with spirits, which I hated. 

_ I should have asked for $100-an-hour _ , I thought, bringing my palms together as I thought. 

Out of candles, I had to think about how I was going to harness my green fire. It was great for burning the incorporeal bodies of spirits, but it took quite a bit of magick for me to create from within. I couldn’t produce large quantities of it like I could with mortal fire, the orange kind that normally sits atop candles and inside grills. 

I could blow the ground these spirits hovered over to smithereens, but it wouldn’t do anything to the specters. 

One of their claws raked my left rib cage, and I hissed as cold and pain spread through my body. 

“I guess these scales have their limits,” I muttered, remembering that they defend against mortal weapons pretty well, but cursed energies generally treated my scales like human flesh. And these specters were nothing but cursed energy, mixed in with some volatile emotions and memory fragments. 

Truth be told, I didn’t want to disperse these last two specters. I wanted to flee. Big tough macho folk had trouble running away, but my pride wasn’t that swollen. I was happy to run away and cease a magical beat-down. 

Looking over at the priest, I saw him sloshing holy water from a flask on the tombstone he’d been praying over. By my count, the cleansing was almost done. 

“Excellent. Bring it home,” I yelled, tripping backward over a headstone. 

_ That’s the thing about cemetery battles. If you aren’t looking down at your feet, you’ve got a 50 percent chance of tripping over a headstone or monument,  _ I thought, feeling my head slam into some tree roots. 

Dashes of red and blue flew from the edges of my eyes upon impact, and the specters were perfectly fine with kicking a girl when she was down. 

One landed on top of me, and I caught its bony claws with my own hands, wrestling to keep it from tearing my face up or my throat open. 

As the second specter raced toward me, I happened to look over at Father McSlowPrayer. He was still praying, but a ghastly woman in a white bed sheet appeared above him holding a dagger. 

_ Ah crap,  _ I thought.  _ The church tended to dock my pay when their priests ended up dead on the job.  _

“Desperate times,” I muttered, unwrapping my lengthy tail from around my waist and holding it in front of my lips. 

The tail was about eight feet long when unwound, and it was covered in yellow scales like the rest of my body, all except for the end of my appendage, which was shaped like a fish tail. 

With a body covered in yellow scales, a long tail that ends up like a fish, and red feathered wings, I’m a good looking lady. And yet, for the life of me, I never get any hits on the dating apps. I must be using the wrong filters. 

“Abstargo,” I muttered again, focussing on the fire in my chest, imbuing it with the anti-spectral energy that would give it that green color. And then I lit my tail on fire. 

I hissed as I did so. I’d only done this once or twice, and it hurt like the dickens each time, but as I said. . . desperate measures. 

Quickly plunging the tail into the specter’s head, I heard it let out a pained cry. Then it caught green fire and burned, leaving nothing but some dust on my red cloak. I usually kept it clean so the black markings on it remained undisturbed. 

_ I hope the drycleaning bill doesn’t come with an extra charge for ghost dust,  _ I thought, stabbing the other specter as it approached. 

When it dissolved, I ran toward the priest, screaming at him to look up. He did, but just in time to take a dagger to the right shoulder. 

“You won’t finish me, holy man!” the woman in white yelled. 

Unlike the specters, she had a more human-looking form, albeit one could see through her with enough focus. 

The priest fell to the ground clutching his shoulder and dropping his cross. 

At 62, that fall probably wasn’t great for him, let alone the stabbing. 

“Hang on, McSlowPrayer!” I called, leaping up a bit and letting my wings carry me forward to the woman in white. 

She looked up at me with her white eyes and hissed. I jabbed my tail forward, but she slipped back. 

When I couldn’t take the pain anymore, I grabbed my tail, and focussed magick on my breath, blowing the fire out. Then I tenderly rubbed it and wrapped the appendage around my waist again. 

_ That’s going to need some ointment,  _ I thought, looking for the woman in white. 

I helped up the priest and said, “I think we should eat our losses on this one, padre. She’s clearly got the upper hand.” 

“Nonsense! We just need to have faith,” the priest said, grabbing his cross necklace. “I can still expel her spirit with a little more time. The prayer is lengthy and takes a while to finish. You just need to focus on protecting me.” 

“The only thing you’re expelling right now is blood, and at an alarming rate. We can always come back on the next full moon and try again,” I said, raising my claws, trying to get the old man to see some logic. 

“And how many more people will this ghost kill in the next month?” the priest asked. 

I clenched my right claw tight and sighed. 

Heroics were never really my thing. That was more of a human trait, and since I was only half. . . eh. 

“Okay, we’re gonna need some good luck,” I said, pulling up my cloak and opening one of the smaller pockets toward the top on my right side. 

Out crawled a green sprite that had taken the form of a praying mantis. 

“Juji, I need a little luck please,” I said. 

The mantis made a little clicking noise, tapped its front legs together and scurried up to my shoulder, starting to glow a bright green. I could feel a calming energy building inside the sprite. 

“Good girl,” I said, reaching into the big pocket on the left side of my cloak. 

I looked down at my black leggings and saw a mud stain as I fished around in the pocket. 

“Lovely,” I muttered. 

“What is that thing?” the priest asked, pointing. 

I turned and snarled at the priest. 

“Her name is Juji. She’s not a thing. She’s my friend. Got it?”

The priest slowly raised his hands. 

“I expect you to apologize to my friend for calling her a thing when this is over,” I said, pulling out another bon bon and tossing it in my mouth. 

He did not respond. 

Throwing my hand back in, I finally felt the beginning of a chain in my pocket and pulled it out. A little silver chain that had a golden ring on the end sat in my palm. The ring looked like a wedding band. 

“What are you going to do with that?” the priest asked. 

“You can’t really exorcise her while she’s poofing around the cemetery, so I’m going to use this experimental charm, imbue it with my fire sorcery, and hope it snags the lady,” I said. 

The priest thought for a moment and then looked closer at the ring as I held it up to my mouth. 

“I don’t understand,” the priest said. 

I sighed as the lady in white appeared behind us and raised her dagger. 

“No time!  _ Capistra anulis _ !” I said, summoning fire to my chest once more and praying I hadn’t said the spell too loud. 

Delicate spells for banishing and binding had to have a calm and clear voice behind them, and they mustn’t be spoken too loud, or the harsh volume destabilizes the magick, and the spell deflates like a souffle. 

I breathed a white fire over the ring, and sigils I’d carved into it came to life, glowing red and orange. 

Inhaling again, I shouted, “Juji, now!” 

The glowing green sprite grabbed onto the necklace chain and clung for dear life as I hurled the necklace at the woman in white. 

She hissed and tried to dodge left, but luck was on my side. Juji’s luck altered the necklace at just the right trajectory to catch her incorporeal body. 

The woman in white screamed as the necklace moved up her body, clinging no matter how much she struggled. Eventually, it clasped around her neck, and she slammed down into the ground like she suddenly weighed a ton or two. 

The woman in white tried to move, but the necklace held her in place, glowing bright as she struggled against it with her own power. 

Walking over and scooping up Juji, I saw the ghost try to stab my boot. I took a step back just in time, and her dagger plunged into some leaves. The late autumn air blew through my cloak as I turned to the priest and said, “Move it, Father McSlowPrayer. My energy won’t hold her forever. I was only able to put a finite amount into the ring.” 

He nodded and ran over with his cross, starting up the final part of the prayer. She continued to shriek as he went on speaking in Latin. 

When at last he was done, the priest pulled out his flask of holy water and doused her form with it. She let loose one final screech and dissolved into a fine dust, not unlike the specters from earlier. 

I let loose a sigh and walked over to the priest stretching my wings. 

“Good job, Father McSlowPrayer,” I said, eyeing his shoulder. “We should probably get you to a hospital for that.” 

He nodded and turned to me. 

“St. Luke’s Medical Center is just down the road. Do you want to tag along? I thought I saw you get clawed on the ribs.” 

I shook my head. 

“Mortal doctors don’t really know what to do with me. Thanks to a powerful charm from mommy dearest they’d see a normal college-age girl. But when they went to stick me with an IV and the needle bent or take an x-ray, and they see my true skeletal structure? It wouldn’t end well. It’ll heal on its own.” 

He raised a hand to put it on my shoulder, and I flinched, jumping back a few inches. 

“No touching,” I said. “I don’t. . . like being touched.” 

The priest again put up his hands and scratched his patchy white beard. We locked eyes, and he looked down at the praying mantis. 

“I’m. . . sorry for calling you a thing,” he said. Then, turning to me, he said, “I have to admit, I wasn’t onboard with the church starting up a. . . freelancer program a few years back. But the few times we’ve worked together, I’ve come to value your assistance.” 

I nodded and pulled out an envelope from inside my cloak, handing it to him. 

“What’s this?”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, priest. That’s my invoice for the full night’s payment as your bosses agreed to. And the sooner I can get the money, the better. I don’t suppose the church uses Paypal?”

The priest just stared at me. 

“What did you do with that wedding ring?” the priest asked. 

“I imbued it with a magical binding spell activated by my white fire. The wedding band was a symbol for the magick to work through. Wedding bands are used to bind couples together. So here I used it to bind the specter to the ground,” I explained. “I’m actually glad it worked. I only brought it as a just-in-case item.” 

The priest nodded and then looked down at the envelope I’d given him. 

“Please tell me you aren’t going to send a check,” I sighed, finishing off the bon bons. 

Now the priest smiled and said, “Relax, Tia. We can do a wire transfer. We’re not too terrible with technology. I’ll have you know I actually made my first Amazon purchase last week. Two days and right to my door. Amazing stuff.” 

I chuckled and said, “You. . . you ordered another crucifix for your house, didn’t you?”

He shrugged and then grimaced at his shoulder. 

“Of course you did. Well, get me that wire transfer when you’re out of the hospital. I know it’s a weekend, so it’ll take another day or two,” I said, turning to go. 

“You’re not going to escort a wounded old man to the hospital? It’s 3 a.m. What if I get mugged?”

“I can’t imagine the crime rate in Glenrock, Wyoming is too terrible. Have faith,” I said, smiling and flying up into the cold November sky. 

As I did, I tucked Juji back down into her little pocket. And reaching into my bon bon pocket, I pulled out a cherry sucker. Pulling off the plastic top, I melted it with a little orange fire and tossed the remains, putting the sucker on my tongue. 

_ Jeebus, I love cherry,  _ I thought. 

Then I realized that was my last piece of candy and sighed. 

_ I’ll get some more at the airport.  _

My roommate Willow once asked me why I bother flying commercial when I had two wings on my back. I explained that even with fairly hollow bones, I was 120 pounds of person, and flying anywhere for longer than an hour was taxing. Not to mention, I couldn’t fly anywhere near the speed of a commercial jet. It would take me forever to get to my jobs flying. I’d be better off renting a car and driving. 

I flew west toward Casper at a lazy rate. My flight didn’t take off for a few hours. 

It was a little under 30 miles as the crow flies to the airport, but I landed outside in the economy parking lot between a couple pickup trucks. I shivered a bit upon landing, rubbing my arms and trying to get warm. 

Despite the risk of being seen flying low, I hated getting up too high because it got so damn cold. Of course, I wasn’t going to risk flying down at the main passenger drop-off because no matter how fast I was, a camera would see something. And I’d lose my TSA pre-check status pretty quick if they knew I was only half-human. 

I snickered thinking of putting that on a security document and sending it in. 

“Please check the box to indicate what the other half of you is,” I muttered, smiling. 

I picked up the pace and headed toward the deserted passenger-dropoff section. A round metal awning stretched about 30 feet for cars to offload passengers here. Unsurprisingly, there was little traffic at 4 a.m. 

Looking at my emails on my smartphone, I saw my departure time was 6 a.m., with the boarding starting about half an hour before that. 

Walking onto thin gray carpet inside, I saw a few yawning employees at the ticket counter for United Airlines and Delta. Flights out of Casper only went to Denver and Salt Lake City. I had a half-hour layover in the Mile High City before my connecting flight to St. Louis left at 9 a.m.

Yawning and cursing the ticket counter guys for making me do it, I headed for the security line. I fished into one of my back cloak pockets and pulled out my skinny black wallet with a red pentagram on the front. I flipped it open and pulled out a folded paper boarding pass and Missouri ID card. 

The TSA agent was a pleasantly chipper woman with short-cut black hair. She wore her blue shirt and black pants. 

I smiled as I handed her my boarding pass, glad she couldn’t see my true form. She looked at the ID card next. 

“Early start to the day, huh?” she asked with a deeper voice than I expected. 

I nodded, and she handed me back my ID card and boarding pass, motioning for the TSA pre-check. 

“You hardly need the speed advantage this morning,” she said, laughing. 

I smiled and looked around to see an empty security line. Seems I was the first passenger this morning. 

“Guess I’ll be waiting for a little bit. That’s fine, I could use a little nap. Is anything open yet on the concourse?”

The security guard pointed through the body scanner and said, “Just Lucy’s Mud Cafe. It opened about half an hour ago.” 

I nodded and headed toward a rather old looking metal detector. I didn’t dare go through the body scanner. My mother’s charm would prevent non-magical beings from seeing the real me. But the body scanner would pick up wings I was pretty sure. 

A woman of color stood by the metal detector with a little blue basket. 

“Phone, keys, wallet, any jewelry?” she asked. 

After wrangling through my pockets, I tossed in my house keys, smartphone, and started reaching up to take my silver crescent moon earrings out when the woman stopped me. 

“Those should be fine, ma’am.” 

I nodded and walked through the metal detector as she indicated. It didn’t go off, and I was given my things back. 

Looking down, I saw the TSA agent had little stars painted on her acrylic nails. 

“Love your nails,” I said. 

“Thanks. I like your earrings. They’re very pretty,” she said. 

I smiled and nodded, heading toward the coffee shop. 

The carpet came to an end, and it gave way to a black and white tile floor. The smell of coffee beans and muffins greeted me. There was a large glass case being filled with baked goods fresh out of the oven. A man with long shaggy brown hair pulled back into a ponytail moved food in with a pair of tongs. 

He wore a green apron over a black polo shirt and jeans. 

“Good morning! Be right with you,” he said. 

He walked over a couple seconds later and asked what he could get me. I looked up at a light-up board menu behind him and pulled out my wallet. 

“Oh, cool wallet! Are you Wiccan?”

I shook my head. 

“That’s cool. Some of my bandmates are Wiccan. They totally do rituals with incense and stuff. It seems so holistic,” he said. 

It took everything I had to keep from rolling my eyes. My beliefs were. . . complicated. I usually just went with Pagan as a catch-all term for what I believed in. But there was no way I’d put any more a specific label on it than that. And I definitely didn’t have the energy to get into all of that with Chatty McChatterson here. 

“Can I please get an iced caramel macchiato? And. . . what’s over there in the case?” I asked, looking. “I’ll take those three chocolate croissants you just put in there.” 

“All three? They’re pretty big,” he asked. 

I smiled and said, “I’m a big girl. I think I can handle it.” 

He nodded and rang up my total on his little iPad with the card reader. I pulled out my debit card with a rainbow and unicorn design on it. The card said, “River Town Bank,” on it in white letters. 

In spite of his aggravating questions, I left him a $2 tip and took my food. 

“Hey! You’re welcome to eat in here if you wanna chat. I’m gonna be cleaning tables for the next little while,” he called out. 

I pretended I didn’t hear him and continued out into the concourse. I found my flight at gate A-2. There was a little screen with “Denver, Colorado,” displayed next to the door that led outside. 

The Casper airport was small, and some of the flights actually had you walk outside onto the tarmac and up some stairs to get on the little puddle jumper. 

I shook my head and pulled out a chocolate croissant, tearing into it and letting melted chocolate drip down my chin. 

_ So creamy. . .  _ I thought, pulling out a napkin from the coffee shop bag I was given and wiping my face. 

I tore off a small piece of the croissant without any chocolate and handed it to Juji who was now sitting in my lap partially covered by the cloak. She clicked happily as I placed the tiny piece in the grasp of her front legs. 

“Eat up, champ. You earned it. That was such a nice arc through the air,” I said, making a soft whoosh sound.

I patted the top of her head with my index finger as she finished. She held up her front tibial spines as I opened the second chocolate croissant. I giggled and tore off another piece without any chocolate, putting it in front of her. 

The mantis ate her piece and took one more from the third croissant I purchased. 

_ I’ll need that little convenience store to open in the corner before I get on the plane so I can buy a few chocolate bars or something,  _ I thought.  _ I’ll want them on the flight.  _

I may put a lot of sugar in my body, but it sure beat hunger pangs for human flesh. Between candy and human, I think candy was the safer pick. 

I closed my eyes, but not before focussing and raising the temperature in the air around me in a five-foot radius. If an unfriendly beastie came too close to me while I slept, their body temperature would conflict with what I’d established, and I’d feel it immediately. 

Thankfully, nothing major happened in the hour I slept. A few more people stood around the concourse now, and I saw our plane outside against the pink hues of sunrise. I got up and stretched, then made sure Juji was tucked safely in her pocket.

Walking over to the now-open convenience store corner, I bought about five chocolate bars and put them in my former bon bon pocket. I wouldn’t have time to buy any during my layover in Denver. I’d probably just have enough time to find my gate and get on my flight. That was fine. I just wanted to get home and sleep in my bed. 

They finally called boarding for the plane, and I got on first, having the frontmost seat. As close to “first class” as you got on these little jets. The only perk seemed to be extra legroom, which I was fine with. 

_ What I really want is some extra wing-room,  _ I muttered, keeping them folded in as best I could. 

People may not have been able to see my wings, but they could sure feel them if I smacked them accidentally. 

As I sat down in my blue leather seat with a white armrest, I hoped there wouldn’t be a seat mate. 

Looking out the window, it was starting to get light enough I could make out mountains in the distance. 

_ I wish Missouri had pretty mountains like that,  _ I thought before hearing a gasp. 

Turning, I saw a man about my age staring at me slack-jawed. 

_ Great. Out of the 30 people on this plane, there just happened to be a mythic,  _ I thought. Mythic was my word any kind of magical creature from anansi to vampires. The charm my mother placed on me as a child would fool humans, but it did nothing to hide my true appearance from mythics. 

“Take a seat and quick gawking. You’re the only one who can see this,” I hissed at him. 

The man had a laptop case and was wearing a gray hoodie with the words “University of Colorado” on it. 

He had a blue mohawk and a nose piercing. I saw some sort of tattoo under his exposed right sleeves. 

“Sir, is everything okay?” the one flight attendant asked. 

He slowly nodded, faked a smile, and sat down, still staring at me. 

“It’s rude to stare,” I hissed. 

The man looked like I’d slapped him across the face, but he wasn’t angry. He was just mystified into a stupor. I had that effect on people when they saw the real me.

Thinking real quick, I pulled out my phone and texted Willow to let her know I was on the plane and about to leave Wyoming. 

Her response was a thumbs up emoji and a kissy face. 

_ Gay,  _ I thought. 

I smirked. If I knew her, she was on the roof of our building right now on a yoga mat meditating under the sunrise. It was her morning ritual. The girl was a morning riser, which helped since she ran a little new age/witch shop in downtown St. Louis. 

She got up, did her meditation, showered, and then went to work opening the shop by 8 a.m. 

“I’m. . . uh, Jonathan,” the man said, extending a hand. 

I shuddered and locked eyes after rejecting his handshake. 

“I’m Tia, and I’m not a big fan of handshakes, hugs, or any other form of physical contact,” I said. 

“Right. . . sorry,” he said, pulling his hand back. 

He looked like he wanted to ask a question but then slowly reached for his laptop case and pulled out one of the  _ Dresden Files  _ books. I snorted. 

_ That series takes itself way too seriously,  _ I thought. 

It was about then I began to pick up a faint odor. My seat-mate had done a good job trying to mask it with a few herbs, but my nose was sharper than most. I smelled wet dog, and not like Jonathan owned a pet dog. 

Looking over at him, I asked, “So. . . fun night last night?”

He twitched and looked like he was trying to keep calm. 

“Wh-why do you ask?” 

“Full moon is a big night for your kind. I guess you flew out here to run up to the mountains and just. . . go crazy.” 

Now he was starting to sweat. I could hear his heartbeat picking up, too. 

“I. . . don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, not even bothering to call me crazy for asserting he was a mythic. 

“Jonathan. . . cut the crap. I know a werewolf when I smell one. Wyoming is actually a pretty good place for werewolves. Lots of open room to roam. Not any real big cities. Smart,” I said, nodding. 

He just pretended to read his book. But he stayed on the same page until we were in the air. 

When at last he couldn’t take it anymore, he turned to me and said, “Okay, so you know what I am. Can I ask what you are now?”

I looked over at him, having expected this question since he sat down. 

“You ever heard of a piasa?” I asked. 

Jonathan shook his head. 

“Of course not. Why would anyone else aware of the supernatural world bother to research other mythics? Think of a piasa as a dragon/bird cross. There aren’t any left in the world because they’ve all been hunted to death as of a couple decades ago. Monster hunters put them down because they couldn’t stop eating people,” I said, matter of fact. 

Then I pulled out one of my candy bars and tore it open, taking a big bite. 

“So. . . was your father a. . . what did you call it?”

“Piasa? No. My father is a human accountant. Most average human known to man.” 

“Then, your mother?”

“Nope, a Gypsy with an inhuman tolerance for spicy food, but a human nonetheless.” 

Now the face Jonathan made looked like he was doing algebra. And he didn’t appear to be a strong candidate for math. 

“How. . . I don’t-”

I interrupted him with a sigh and finished my candy bar before saying, “When a hunter slayed the last piasa, its spirit. . . possessed me while I was still in the womb. I guess it planned to be reborn after having some time to heal. Fortunately for myself, my mother sensed this and had the spirit exorcised. Of course, that didn’t matter too much as the spirit had already altered my body into the half-breed piasa you see before you.” 

The flight attendant came by with a drink cart, and I declined to get a beverage. Jonathan had a ginger ale. He spilled some on his jeans when we hit turbulence, and I giggled a little bit. 

I was a little loopy without much sleep and silently hoping this plane ride would just be over soon. 

Willow warned me not to fly out one night, do the job, and fly right back the next morning. I could hear her voice in my head now, “You know you’re just going to be tired and cranky flying back. You should get a hotel and catch a later flight home.

_ Ah, what do you know, you silly witch?  _ I thought. A moment went by where I let out two giant yawns in a row.  _ Okay, fine. You know everything _ . 

“So, you fly to Casper once a month to. . . blow off steam?” I asked, looking at Jonathan. 

He was still trying to wipe his jeans with a napkin he kept licking with his tongue. 

“Yeah. My family has a ranch out here with property that goes back up toward the mountains. They know about my. . . condition and let me do what needs to be done every month. I figure that’s better than taking a chance and hurting someone down in Denver.” 

I nodded. Maybe Jonathan wasn’t so bad. He was just a little nervous around people who knew his secret and. . . turbulence, I guess?

“What brought you to Casper, if you don’t mind me asking?”

I shrugged. What the heck? I was too loopy and tired to bitch at the guy. And he did say if I didn’t mind. 

“Business, really. I’m sort of a. . .magical bodyguard for hire. People who need someone to protect them from a magical threat give me a call, fill out a buttload of paperwork, and then pay me lots of money to keep them safe for a little while.” 

Jonathan’s mouth hung open like he couldn’t believe what I was telling him. 

“Badass,” he finally said. “How on earth did you get into such a job?”

I shrugged. 

“I didn’t want to do the college thing. High school was boring enough, pretending to be human. I hated all of it. That asshole spirit may have possessed me without my permission, but you know what? I’m pretty happy with the results of what I’ve been given. I initially wanted to be a monster hunter, but they don’t really apprentice with other monsters; self-righteous pricks at the International Monster Hunting Association forbid it. So I started my own business kind of like my dad did with his accounting office,” I said. 

Jonathan nodded and snarked, “Sure. . .he files taxes. You. . . fight other monsters. That’s the same.” 

“Hey wolf boy. You see these wings? If I hurled you out the window, and this plane went down, which one of us do you think would survive?” I asked. 

He gulped and said nothing. 

We didn’t really talk much the rest of the short flight into Denver. When we disembarked, he disappeared into a Cinnabon. 

I maneuvered through way more people than I had patience for and eventually got to my connecting flight. 

A couple hours later, I touched down at St. Louis Lambert International Airport. Walking out into a rainstorm, I waited for an Uber and got a driver who reeked of marijuana. 

I took solace in the fact that if he wrecked the car, I’d still be in pretty good shape. That said, I hope he didn’t wreck the car. Car wrecks mean police, interviews, paperwork, witness statements, and a bunch of other crap I didn’t need. 

We mythics typically tried to avoid police whenever able. 

My Uber dropped me off at the Four of Wands witchery store. The front window had salt lamps in it, and when I walked in out of the rain, I smelled lavender incense. To the left were a few bookshelves with books that had titles like, “Rituals For Beginners,” and “Rainmaker.” 

To the right was an assortment of beautiful dreamcatchers in different colors and patterns. Willow sold them on commission for a friend of hers. 

Closer to the cash register sat a glass table with a few tarot decks on it, the newest being one from  _ The Last Unicorn _ . She could barely keep it in stock. 

_ Home sweet home,  _ I thought. 

“Tia! You’re back!” I heard Willow shout from the back storeroom. 

She came running around the corner, narrowly dodging a stand full of crystals. The impossibly tall witch threw her arms around me and squeezed as tight as she could. She didn’t come close to threatening my scales with pressure, but that never stopped her from trying. 

I sort of pawed at her with my left claw and sleepily said, “Yup, I’m home. You’re the only person in the world who gets to touch me, and you abuse the privilege every time.” 

Willow let go and smiled at me. 

“You sound sleepy. I was right, wasn’t I?” she asked, her short curly brown hair jiggling as she put her hands on her hips. 

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said. 

“Oh yeah? Well why don’t I close the shop for a bit, and we’ll go next door to Fernando’s for brunch?”

I twitched. 

The brunch line would take an hour to get through, and every bone in my body was screaming for sleep. 

I looked Willow over in her black Lacuna Coil shirt and plaid skirt. She smirked and narrowed her eyes under a dark blue eyeshadow. 

“Well, roomie? Brunch? My treat. You can tell me all about your adventures with the priest. Oh wait. . . that didn’t sound right.” 

Looking deep inside, I pondered if I had enough energy to do this, just to prove her wrong. If I went to bed now, I wouldn’t hear the end of it for the rest of the weekend. 

_ Come on, Tia. You can do this!  _ I thought. 

“So. . . brunch? Chocolate chip pancakes? My treat?” Willow taunted. 

I turned to go and then collapsed to my knees instead, grabbing Willow’s waist. 

“Please don’t make me go, Willow. I’m sooooo tired. You were right. I just wanna go upstairs and sleep for ten hours.” 

A devilish smile spread over her face as she put a finger under my chin, moving my head up so I made eye contact with her. She’d just done her nails with some kind of purple polish while I was gone.

Willow had these enchanting hazel eyes. They were witch’s eyes. If you made eye contact with a witch, they had your attention until they chose to surrender it. Just one of their abilities that were near impossible to overcome. And some made damn good use of it. 

“You can go to bed anytime you want, poor sleepy Tia. It wasn’t like we had a wager or anything.” 

I started to look away, but I found she still held me in her gaze. 

“But next time I tell you to get a hotel and rest after a job, you’d best do it, yeah?”

I nodded, my red eyes still locked in hers. And then, with a silent pressure around my head, she released me. 

I sighed and let my claws drop to the floor. 

It was at this point Nibbles came over, looking to see what all the commotion was. Nibbles was a curious three-legged cat that we adopted and took care of. He spent most of his days wandering around the store, seeking attention from customers. And he got what he wanted every time. 

Scratching him behind the ears, I asked if he missed me. The little black cat mewed, and I sat there petting him for another 30 seconds before my eyes started to droop. 

“Okay, cat whisperer. I think it’s time for bed,” Willow said, helping me up and gently pushing me toward the stairs that led up toward our loft. They stood behind a white door with a black oval door knob behind the cash register. 

“Oh, that vampire duke called again. He really wants you to take that job protecting his son next week as he returns from boarding school.” 

“I’ll call him tomorrow,” I muttered and headed up the stairs. 

Willow was about to encourage me to be more responsible with my clients, but I could see her sigh and let it go. 

“Night, roomie,” she said, calling up the stairs. 

“Mmmmggrrr,” I muttered. 

In my room, I hung my cloak on a hook behind my door. Juji climbed out into my right hand. I kissed her softly and walked over to her terrarium and put her gently inside. Then, I took a couple crickets from the fridge and put them in the corner of her tank. 

“G’night, champ,” I said, collapsing on my Siberian wolf comforter. 

I barely had the energy left to slowly climb under it. But I did because I kicked on the fan when I came into the room, and I was starting to get cold. 

As I drifted off to sleep, I made a mental note to call the vampire duke. . . but that could wait until tomorrow. 

_ In fact, everything could _ , I thought, nodding off into sleep. 


End file.
